ARTISTIC PROFILE

Shauna DeGruchy is a Halifax-based trombonist and music educator whose work spans contemporary performance, ensemble leadership, and university teaching. Her performance career includes a wide range of genres and settings, including contemporary chamber music, orchestral and wind ensemble performance, musical theatre, big band, and interdisciplinary projects. Across these contexts, she is particularly interested in situations where musical structure and interpretation are negotiated rather than fixed, and in the ways rehearsal processes shape collective decision-making in performance.

Shauna is a founding member, co-artistic director, and trombonist with Alkali Collective, an artist-led contemporary chamber ensemble dedicated to the commissioning, performance, and presentation of new music. Through this role, she collaborates closely with composers on newly developed and commissioned works and explores performer-led approaches to rehearsal, programming, and interpretation. Alkali Collective’s activities include multi-season commissioning projects, an annual Call for Scores initiative supporting early-career composers, performances in both traditional and non-traditional venues, and a range of educational and community-based engagements, with a strong emphasis on Canadian contemporary music.

As a performer, Shauna has appeared at festivals and conferences across Canada, including the Vancouver International Jazz Festival, Montreal International Jazz Festival, Sonic Boom New Music Festival, Acadia University’s Shattering the Silence New Music Festival, Upstream Music Association’s Open Waters Festival, and the Halifax Jazz Festival, as well as events such as the Royal Nova Scotia International Tattoo. She has performed internationally, including appearances in Japan with the Vancouver Pops Symphony Orchestra.

Alongside her performance career, Shauna is a music educator with more than fifteen years of teaching experience. She teaches undergraduate musicianship at the Fountain School of Performing Arts at Dalhousie University, where her work includes course planning, assessment design, and the development of detailed weekly structures. She is also active as a guest clinician and workshop leader, having coached and led workshops for ensembles such as the Dalhousie University Wind Ensemble, the Nova Scotia Youth Wind Ensemble, the Nova Scotia Youth Orchestra, and numerous school band programs and community groups.

In addition to her ensemble and teaching work, Shauna develops instruction-based scores and listening projects that extend questions arising from rehearsal and performance practice into everyday and site-specific contexts. She holds a Bachelor of Music in Education and Performance from Acadia University and a Master of Music in Trombone Performance from Université de Montréal.